Or better yet…..Where’s Moo? Take a look at the picture and see if you can find her?

Did you find her?? That’s not a life-like ornament folks, that’s Moo the pain-in-my-booty kitten. You know it’s the holiday season when your cat is in a tree……in the house!! I have no idea how we will keep any ornaments on our tree this year. It’s going to be quite the Griswold Christmas adventure around here, I can see it now.

I really hate feeling angry about things that I can do nothing about. If you read the news then you heard about the story in Ohio with all the exotic animals that were let loose. There was a wild animal preserve in Zanesville, Ohio and apparently the owner decided to let the animals loose and then kill himself.

This post isn’t to show my anger for the police officers who had to shoot and kill these animals but for the state, city, county and whoever is running things in the state of Ohio. From what I read, this man who owned the preserve was in trouble multiple times for animal cruelty and just in general for the animals he had on his property vs. certain permits. Police had been there many times and he was known by many.

From ABC: Thompson has been warned repeatedly over the last decade to get his animals under control – and no less than 30 times in the past year. He was arrested in April of 2005 for cruelty and torture of cattle and bison he had on his property, according to the website pet-abuse.com.

Soooo… he was in that much trouble and yet no one did anything to protect the animals??? Why exactly was he allowed for so long to keep these animals? Why was he permitted to continue buying more??

I really hope that after this mess and hurt and anger it has caused that the state will step up and do something about the laws in place.

Personally I don’t think any one person should be allowed to own a wild animal and keep it on their property for any reason. EVER! There are specific places and organizations that can take in and rehabilitate wild and exotic animals. It’s cruel to keep them locked in a cage or pen where they can’t do as nature created them to do.

I’m sure I could continue on and on with this but I’d like to hear how you feel. Tell me your thoughts!

Like this:

Having ferrets is a lot of fun for a lot of reasons. We have ferret fun time and they get to come out and play, we have ferret bath time and they get to come out and swim and ferret war dancing too! These are all a lot of fun to watch.

I decided to take pics of our last ferret bath time to share with all of you. (Please excuse anything gross you may see…this takes place in my teens bathroom and let’s be honest…teens are gross!)

You are seeing pictures of 4 different ferrets having swim time and getting clean too! They do NOT all enjoy this so some of them spend more time playing on the bathroom floor than swimming!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the fun as much as we do! Do you have ferrets? What do you do for fun? Do you now want a ferret? Let us know!

Yes, that’s correct, we have a new family member. That would make animal number 10! Soooo have you figured out yet that we LOVE animals??

This particular animal was located in the wild. In our area this is unheard of. We do not have wild ferrets running around here. They are pets and you buy them or adopt them. This little girl was found by Matt while at work. She was running the town, running into the street and making a nuisance of herself.

If you do not know anything about ferrets then allow me to explain. Most ferrets (at least around here) originate at the pet store. They get them from a very large breeder – Marshalls. It is possible to obtain a ferret through a shelter or person but they are usually Marshall’s ferrets as well that someone didn’t want. It’s rare to see a non-Marshalls ferret. The ferrets come to the pet store spayed/neutered and sadly, tagged as well with a little ear tattoo. I know…it’s sad. People pay up to 120.00 dollars to adopt from the pet store so it was shocking to find this little girl running around in the wild.

Matt scooped her up right away with every intention of bringing her home to add to our brood. There was rumor of a second wild ferret but it was never located. Poor little Red was skinny and filthy. Once she was cleaned up, our brood of 3 took her right in as family. It was super cute.

Ferrets also mate with other ferrets. This match can be between any sex. They are all fixed so it’s more like a lifetime partner. You will usually read that you should have either 1 ferret or 3 or more, never just 2. If one of them dies then the odds of your second ferret dying are very high as they get depressed from the loss.

Anyway…our 3rd little ferret, Sox, had no mate to speak of and he and Red joined up right off the bat and Sox has actually been much happier. We now have 2 sets of mated ferrets and 4 best friends.

I haven’t bonded in a special way with a ferret in a long time. We lost 3 ferrets all pretty close together about a year and a half ago. That left us with 2 and I wasn’t ready for more until Sox came along. Matt actually bonded more with Sox than I did. Little Red though, she changed my heart. I bonded with her right off and have since had some special moments with Sox as well.

I can officially say I have a special relationship with al 4 ferrets now and all 4 ferrets are happy and content. The Griswold Zoo saved the day once again!

Do you have ferrets? If so tell me about them! Any tips on ferrets or homes with many animals? I would love to hear about that too!

We got all of our animals when they were babies and we usually name them within a couple of days.

Frady Cat was 1 of 4 that my mom and I rescued and fostered about 5 years ago. We named all 4 of the babies and Matt dubbed Frady with the name “Frady Cat” because it seemed cool to have a cat named Frady Cat. We decided to keep 2 of those 4 kittens and Frady was one of them. We had no idea what a perfect name we had chosen for this little guy.

Frady Cat is literally a Frady Cat! He lives most of his life in a cabinet. When he comes out of the cabinet he never leaves the room the cabinet is located in. This is a cabinet on a large computer desk. We keep the cat food and water and litter in the room with this desk because he doesn’t come out of the room! If you were to come visit, you would find him in his cabinet. He has a hair collection growing in there. It’s hard to clean it out because he is always in there hiding from the world!

We also unknowingly chose a perfect name for Crash. Matt picked Crash up from a far away place and drove him home when he was 3 months. On the way home, Matt passed a car crash that had just happened on the side of the road and pulled over to help. He felt that Crash would be a neat name because of that little moment together and he thought Crash sounded like a pretty cool dog name. Once again, once we decided on the name Crash, we had no idea how perfect it would actually be for a new little guy.

Within a few days of giving him his name he showed us his colors. He became something of a bull in a china shop. He crashes into everything, the walls, the furniture, and people too! He just mows everything in his path down.

Share This:

Like this:

Somewhat stemming of our “Are we running a Zoo” post, I’ll introduce Zaira. She’s another of our wonderful dogs. Zaira is 3 1/2 and we have had her for a little over 3 years.

Zaira was never quite as bad as Crash when she was a puppy BUT, she was bad!

When Zaira was little she liked to go out back and play ball. She LOVED it! So when the days were short, I found a ball that glows in the dark so we could go out even after dark and play.

She became attached to that ball like a toddler to a security blanket. Here we are years later and she is still toting that ball around everywhere she goes. Now, Zaira was an is a chewer and destroyer SOOO she burned through the first ball and chewed a big hole in it. We had to buy another one.

The second ball was green and at first she shunned it as not “her” ball, but soon after jumped on board and it was as if it had always been “the one”.

We had to buy another one – it was pink like the first and she jumped right in with that ball too.

We still have ball number 3 but are prepared for the worst with other balls.

I’m not sure her life would be the same without that ball.

She eats with it.

She sleeps with it.

She gets held with it.

She met Crash with it.

She gets hugs with it.

She plays with other toys with it.

And she relaxes with it.

Does your dog have a favorite toy? What is it?

Share this post and Follow us!

Advertisements

Share This:

Like this:

Over time we have had our share of pets and sadly, have lost our share of pets. That’s the reality of having a pet. Odds are, you will lose them and not the other way around.
We are animal lovers and actually have multiple pets. If you follow our blog then you know of two pets for sure, but we have more. We have 9 furry pets to be exact plus we have fish.

As if what we “own” wasn’t enough, we were adopted by opossoms a few years ago and the generations have stuck around. We attempted a family tree last year because yes, we name them! They adopted us and they come on the porch and eat the food we leave them. At one point last spring we had 6 babies in a cage in the house!

Matt has recently been adopted by the squirrels as well. They now eat every morning without even having to look for food. It’s right there for them. One squirrel in particular is quite mouthy when he isn’t fed on time. “Hellooooo Friend Squirrel! You’re wild!!”

We have seen multiple other animals over time: a turtle literally knocked on the door one night, of course “the chicken”, many random dogs have stopped in for a meal, kittens, cats and a couple peacocks have all been at the house.

So again, my question is, are we running a zoo? Is the word out on the streets that we are suckers for a hungry animal? “Psst, hey Fred! If you go two blocks north there’s a house with a couple suckers..hehe, just look tired and weak! They feed you, scratch your back and sometimes offer a comfy blanket.” Yes, I think this is exactly what happens out there. There is no other explanition for turtles, chickens and peacocks! We live in a suburb/residential neighborhood. Oh, and aren’t opossoms supposed to be afraid of us?

Share This:

Like this:

…We’re not quite sure exactly why. Perhaps it was to seek shelter. Maybe he was lost and sensed that our house was animal friendly. Or it may have been just to add one more oddity to our strange, surprise filled day to day lives.

It was the beginning of August 2004 and hurricane Charley was on his way. Suddenly a fully grown chicken showed up at the front door. This wouldn’t be so odd maybe if we lived in a farm area but we live in a completely residential area. Dogs and cats show up from time to time, some even spend the night but this was the first chicken. We had no idea where he came from but he was friendly and was comfortable around people. We spent some time with him and then tried to send him on his way…but he wasn’t going anywhere.

With a major hurricane having its nasty eye set on our area, we couldn’t let this chicken roam the streets. We wanted to make sure he survived the storm so we made a place for him in our enclosed back porch where “he” layed an egg! We aren’t sure why we stinll continue to call him a he, but we do! During his stay with us we decided to have a little fun. Matt’s sister had a bedroom that had been described as looking like a “clothes bomb” had gone off in it. While she was out we introduced the chicken to her room. The chicken seemed to really enjoy her room and the comfort of the soft nest like clothes bomb. As the chicken nestled in and made himself right at home we carefully placed a hidden video camera in the room.(This video has not been located)

It should be mentioned, that Matt’s sister had not yet met the chicken so she was unaware that we had a chicken at the house. With that in mind, we felt that the last thing she would expect to encounter in her room would be a chicken…or a goat…but we only had a chicken at the time.

A short time later she arrived home. We were pretty excited for the anticipated “meeting”. She went into her room and all was quiet for a few minutes. This “clothes bomb” was quite widespread so it was very possible that a chicken (or a goat) may not be noticed right away. But then it came…the moment we were waiting for…a blood curdling scream unmatched by any horror movie. We also heard inaudible words (and possible expicitives) amongst the screams.

She quickly emerged from her room with tears in her eyes and sheer terror in her face. She was greeted by several of us laughing so hard that we too shed tears. She said in a terrified tone : “Whaaaat was thaaaaat!?”. We told her, quite simply, that it was a chicken. Nearly crying she replied “Whyyy…why is there a chicken in there ???”. We explained to her why the chicken was visiting and that he was only in her room to get the reaction we had just enjoyed. When we went in to congratulate the chicken on a job well done, I’m pretty sure there was a mischievous smile on his little chicken face. He fit in so well.

As much as we would have loved to keep the chicken, after the storm passed we found him a home on an actual farm with other chickens and goats, but he had a good time and was pretty much treated like royalty during his stay with us. So maybe this chicken crossed the road to make some friends, some memories and to do some things that most chickens don’t get to do.

Tell us about your animal stories! Share with friends on Facebook and don’t forget to follow us!

Advertisements

Share This:

Like this:

That’s Crash, he’s our American Bulldog. He was born on July 13, 2010 so he’s technically still a puppy. Doesn’t he look like the cutest, most innocent baby you’ve ever seen!? When he was little he was so sweet and cuddly. Then he started to grow, and grow and then grow some more. We should have known that something THAT cute was too good to be true!

He got soooo big! He’s now about 70 pounds and can stand on his back feet at almost 5 feet tall!!

So as Crash was growing, he became quite destructive. He destroyed dog toys, some DVD’s, shoes, my jewelry,dog collars (like the awesome RED SOX one in his picture below) and tons of shoe laces. You know, pretty much anything he could get his mouth on.

We learned a valuable lesson and started tucking EVERYTHING away somewhere he couldn’t get it.

Innocent Looks are Deceiving

What happened next was a little more destructive and not so easily replaced. He started on the couch. It was a gradual process. He worked on this every couple days until he finished.

He also liked fish rocks. He ripped the bag apart and even ate plenty of those rocks. They were stored away in the cabinet below the fish tank but he figured out how to open the cabinet. He ate the rocks and ruined all the bottles of chemicals for the tank (no, he did not ingest or consume any of them luckily).

That's fish rocks on the rug

Oh, so back to that gradual couch process. The next series of pictures shows what the couch looks like now. He finally took care of all those pesky cushions. Who needs those? You can also see some wonderful wall damage he wanted to leave for us. This breed loves to push, pull, tug and destroy so he has toys and activities outside as well as toys inside that we hoped would quench that thirst. No. That was not the case. Crash loves his toys but even more, he LOVES a nice couch ! He even seems a bit proud when caught re-designing. He looks at you happy and smiling like “Hey guys !…Come see what I made !”.

The after couch

Yes, that’s correct, the cute little guy you see below did that to our couch. He seems to like it better this way, although we don’t actually agree with him. Does anyone agree? You could borrow my little designer for a few days if you want to. So he’s our not so little destroyer, creator of chaos, our monster but somehow he’s still sweet and we love him.

So, has your wonderfully innocent pet done anything this kind for you? Tell us about it.